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Magic in Klial
Mysticism and Magic in Klial To the uninitiated the mystical sects of Klial seem like diverse unrelated philosophies. The Esoteric sects that operate with sanction in Klial are indeed various in their affect, but the wise know that these variations are more in the manifestation of a hidden power than a variability in the origin of that power. There is but one source of all the spiritual power in Klial and for it to be understood one must understand the principles which inform all mystical study in Klial. To the uninitiated there appear to be two aspects to a person – a solitary and simple division which is obvious to anyone who sleeps and dreams. There is the body and the mind, so the people of Klial and the whole world believe and must accept. There is the internal mental self and the external physical self and for almost everyone this is sufficient to describe all of their existence. There is another self, unknown to most, and in the world nearly irrelevant, but it is the path to power for the few who seek to develop that self. A person has a mind and it is better or worse than other minds, it may be cultivated, nurtured, thoughts and ideas can grow and flourish in the well tended mind. A body is likewise better or worse for its treatment or neglect. A person may be foolish in his mind but strong in his physique, or else a person may be wise of thought and weak of body. There are grades and variants and anyone can rise or fall in the strength of them. The spirit is the third aspect and in the larger world it is greatly neglected – in the realm of the spirit almost all people are like idiots and weaklings. But the spirit self, the mystic anima – it exists in everyone and like the body and like the mind it can be grown or fall to ruin. The Anima is difficult to sense, hard to measure or feel and so it lies dormant in most, untapped. The world is forgiving of such frailty. The spirits of the world are few and manifest only sparingly. The Tutelary spirits of Place can be avoided, the Genius Spirits of Blood are known more by their works than their presence – inheritance and birthright being their work. The Familiar spirits only barely exist within the world – the ghosts of ideas, the motion of thought itself. Very often these external spirits are the would-be magician's guide to the larger world of the mystical, but just as often they are the imps of the unwary harrying the'r eckless. Just as there are techniques and schools for cultivating the physical self and the mental self, there are regimens of training for the advancement of the spiritual self. Before commenting on those paths it is worthwhile to describe the spiritual landscape. Much of this work has been a description of the temporal and mental landscape of Klial – this then is a brief survey of the mystical world that occupies that place alongside the ideologies and hegemonies that govern the world. 'The Spirits ' ' '''There are three tribes of spirit that occupy the world. These spirits have been referenced elsewhere but here they and their roles shall be explicated more clearly – as clearly as they are comprehended by those who study these matters closely – for just as the mind and the body are unknown completely so the still more mysterious spiritual world is incompletely understood. There is that spirit of the blood, a spirit of family and self that exists within everyone and all living things, it is the physical mental and spiritual identity of all people and all creatures and it is this spirit that causes creatures to breed true, and allows the spark of anima to pass from one generation to the next. This is the Genius Spirit, the spirit of blood, ancestry, descent and heredity. Spirits of Genius are in all living things and are driven by their will to express their fruition – the passage of life through the generations. Then there are the spirits of place, the Tutelary Spirits. The anima of things has an effect on the invisible aethers – it stirs the inscrutable essence of the world just as a body stirs the air or words stir the mind – these ripples and echoes in the unseen medium become another presence – the spirit of place and of history. The world is haunted by these ghosts, the ghosts of use – that govern human places – hearth spirits or well ghosts are gathered by the gathering of people and they offer knowledge of places and of what transpires within them. These spirits watch or haunt, observe or protect – these spirits are weaker or stronger than others – they are ruled by the strength of that which creates them and their strength is only as great as the passions that stir them into existence in the first place. Sometimes matters will change in a place and the Tutelary spirits might be changed alongside their haunts, or else they might be destroyed by such alterations. The tutelary spirits are the least robust of the spirits, the most ephemeral and the most commonly encountered. The final spirit is the most elusive and perhaps the most powerful. More robust or more tenacious, the Familiar spirits are stirred by the collision of ideas and the spiritual medium. They are the spirits of ideas, of name and of though itself. They are the gods of the Crafter-Faith, the champions of the national identity, the voice of language and the dream of all philosophies. These spirits are all but inaccessible to the untrained and they are the guardians of the most mystical knowledge in the triune world. ' '--------------------------------- 'There are those who consider the mind to be the eternal aspect of mankind. This is plainly wrong. The mind is fragile, it cannot exist forever, just as the body fades so does the mind. The Anima it is not thought but perception unaided by thought. The Anima is like a sheet that one drags through his life, it is colored and altered by every step taken but it has no thought of its own and it does not perceive actively. The Anima is not consciousness, it is only the record of all that has and will happen in the life of a man.' ''' '' ''- Ultian Halvsh Whitesail – Mysteriarch of the Coven of 1 Face and Many'' ' ' ''' ''The So-called Metaphysical sciences are nothing more than misapprehensions of actual science. These charlatans misunderstand that ritual is only repeatable experimentation and misunderstand the many aspects of the external to mean that it is more than one thing. The Essences are the many faces of one thing. These techniques are not innate talents that set someone apart from his fellowmen – it is a practicable technique, like a dance or a language – anyone can learn these things and they are not mysterious.'' ' - ''Giyls Fire over Wind – Essentialist to the Threadbare Court' '''A Metaphysician's Map of the World ' ''-''A Treatise of The World Unseen – Beauty Warfield Rosecrown'' Over the lifetimes of many magicians and witches the metaphysical sciences have been thoroughly established as acutely valid. The metaphysic doors thoroughly eclipse all other human endeavors, cowing even the great Empire of the Klialis. To follow the metaphysic paths and open the hidden doors is the greatest labor undertaken – though it is simultaneously undertaken without the least effort by everyone who lives and has lived. Basically there is a world, and a simplistic method of perceiving it – and a complex method of perceiving it. In the mundane world of sense the world is as it appears. To the Metaphysician the world is another thing beyond mere seeming. The Metaphysician can perceive without the eyes, hear without ears and follow the invisible paths of the world. The Map of the Metaphysical was composed over the life ages of many gifted Magicians but more than a map it is a guide to other Magicians, and to those who wish to become like them. There are two principle media in the world – and damn the misguided science of the Essentialists. There is the World and the Outer Place – that which exists only in the sleeping minds of us all – the dreaming world that is the world and everything in it – and much more as well. Encircling the world is the broken ring – which is the path all magicians must follow. There are several steps from the world to the Broken Ring – the most attainable is that of the Witch Covens – the Lodge. The Lodge is the First true door in the Magicians' Route – it is the bending of the will toward a collective goal. Only a Magician of great mastery is able to subsume her desires and thereby become an agent of the mass-dream which is the Coven. From the Lodge there are two paths of progress in the Magicians' Route – the Road Auspicious and the Road Sinister. These roads are profound commitments – departures from the comfort of the Lodge into the pursuit of mastery. This is a daring task and one that few Metaphysicians make – but with the learning one may gain from the Lodge it is obtainable. The Auspicious Path leads up the ring, in the path of the Sun – it is lighted by the radiance of the first Auspicious Door – the Temporal. This door traverses the World and The Outer Places – it is the simultinaety of all things, the synchronicity of the world. This door demands much of a Magician. To comprehend the world as an arrangement of circumstances and to manipulate circumstance through time so that in all things the Magician is timely and effective – this is the first challenge of Skill on the Magicians' Road – the test of Mastery. A Magician must understand the past and the present and thereby see the future. There are those born into the world who have an uncanny luck, a great fortune or visionary insight – these sometimes traverse the world and enter the Path at this point – without the guidance of the Lodge. Such persons are fated not to become Magicians, though their power is sometimes sufficient to prophecy the future of the world. The Sinister Road leads from the Lodge into an uncanny route – the Counter-Sun passage into the Eternal. It is against the nature of the world to be unchanging – and this is the Magician's challenge of resolve – the Test of Authority. All people bend with the world, and the world itself bends with the will of people. To be unchanged and eternal, like those things which are themselves unchanging – to become pure will – Elemental, this is the task at the Door Eternal. As above so below – the Door Eternal touches both the world and the Place Beyond – and there are some, though perhaps they are only legends or rumors – who are eternal, who do not fade into sleep and death – but who persist. This is a dark blessing and what traverses these persons make upon the Broken Ring must not be contemplated. Beyond the First Auspicious Door is the Road of Heaven – that coincides with the higher aims of the quiet minds of the many and the empyreal realms of the Outer Place. This is the path which purges the Magician of darkness and doubt – it is a great boon and a reward for a Magician's Mastery at the Door Temporal. This Path leads to the opposing doors of the Auspicious face of the Broken Ring – Into the world the Heaven Road traverses the Door of Light – that object that the Builder Church foolishly regards as the final passage of spirits and souls – and the Outer Door, the Beatific Door. The Door of Light is the means by which the three spirits of the world join to the world from the Outer Place. It is approached by the muddled philosophy of the Builders, but it is not traversed. The Door of light is only correctly crossed by the Magician – from the Broken Ring into the World – this is the passage of light – where a Magician must relinquish any and all ambitions to rejoin the world – for beyond the Road Auspicious turns to the Ending Road – the final passage into Oblivion – which no one may walk. But to the Outer Place there is a Door upon the Heaven Road – the Door Beatific. This door is a challenge of another sort – the Challenge of Wishes Fulfilled – the Door Beatific leads a Magician out of time, out of thought – into a realm of only her own pleasure – another place, or a world itself – it cannot be known for certain – but it is an enticement – to turn away from the world and into a place only of one's dreams. The Door Beatific opens only to the most masterful Magicians and its secrets are all but impossible to parse. Further down the Sinister Road, beyond the Door Eternal lie the facing doors of that path – the Essential Door – which faces the world and the Door of Eyes All Seeing. Into the world the door of the Essences flows from the World Road – the path of the World's own eternal nature. Though the world changes relentlessly – it is constant as well and those constant aspects make the world the World. The Road of the World forces the Magician to confront all the eternal aspects of the world and to comprehend the essences of the material world. The Essences all spring from the World Road and pour into the world – creating its eternal components – the physical world is inconstant in form but constant in its essence – the work of the Essences. From without there is the passage into the Place Beyond, the Pl.ace where consciousness exists alone outside of form – it is the Eye All Seeing – the Outer Power that knows all for its body is all things. This is a grave door for a Magician to broach – because it is a joining of her mind to the mind of the universal thought – and by the Magician's joining she makes the world her own – if only in part. Beyond the sinister doors facing the Road Sinister becomes the Master Road. It is believed that there are beings of perfect will, Magicians of the Magicians who may traverse this path and enter beyond the final Door – the Door of Oblivion. This door is void and it touches to the World and to the Place Beyond – and at this junction do the things which are nothing enter into the world. No Magician has traversed this Door from the Broken Ring – but all magicians, all people in fact traverse this door – it is the door of death and beyond there is nothing. Some who die seek to travel the Broken ring, and some are able – they are the ghosts and spirits, re-entering the world at the junctions of the Broken Ring and the World. But this is a false path and nothing can last upon it. ' --------------------------------------' ''There is one Magic in the world and it is the magic of creation. All other tricks are generated by the defining act of generation that was the creation of the world. It is only in imitation of the Great Craft that anything has merit.'' '' '' ''- Percival Evylyn Windheart – Tonnatyne of the Crafter Church.'' '' '' ''There are two roads that can be taken – do not listen to the men of the west who tell their lies and do not suffer to consider the methods of the Eno. There is the world and the Dream, forget the world and become the dreaming self – this is all there is to Magic.'' '' '' ''- Guhnvhalt Red-Bear Emberbark – The Red-Bear Father.'' '' '' ''Do not seek power in this world. The evil of this world corrupts the perfection of the will. Do not seek power save that which may aid you in destroying this world.'' ' ' '''-''Vladis Kadat Mistgather – A Kadat of the Eno'' Covens of the Empire There are 22 Covens which operate by imperial sanction and by their own consensus. Alien cults, mystical hermits and non-conformists notwithstanding – these are the sum total of mystical power and inquiry in Klial. Though there is mutual consent as to the number and dominion of these esoteric societies they are not complimentary and most openly decry the fallacious doctrines of the others. These are secret societies in every sense – their mere existence is somewhat questionable and all that is provided here are their names and theaters of operation. ''' '''Stormhorse – ''The Fire-Seers of Whitebricks'' '' '' Goldendream – ''The Dreamer Coven of the Court Etheric'' &'' ''The Oracles of the Kannyltine's Service '' '' Solemnwell – ''The Ruylishean Adepts'' '' '' Pinepath – ''The Essential Sorcerers of the Lodge of 6 Colors'' '' '' Gleameyes – ''The Vigil-Talans of the Cold Caves'' '' '' Copperring – ''The Url King and His Ruined Court'' '' '' Whitesail – ''The Coven of 1 Face and Many'' '' '' Windheart – ''The Mystery House of the Church of Craft'' '' '' Emberbark – ''the Convention of The Red Bear'' '' '' Nightcandle – ''The Metaphysicians of Albanhome'' '' '' Raindrinker – ''The Blood Witches of the Utterdark'' '' '' Starcrown – ''The Silver Coven'' '' '' Rosecrown – ''The Brightname of the Flower Court'' '' '' Sorrowblood – ''The Fallen House of Bricks'' '' '' Shiningcoast – ''The House of Amber Charms'' '' '' Bronzecap – ''Kannyl Matthias' House at Ippolito Silvo'' '' '' Silverheaven – ''The Singers of the Falling Stars'' '' '' Mistgather – none. The Kadat operate under no sanction